You’re not too late for a play date in May… RETURN TO THE GOOD OLD DAYS

In Vejer de la Frontera, a new wave of restaurants and buzzy boutique hotels has breathed new life into a historic pueblo blanco, says Isabella Noble

2021-03-13 - All information was correct at the time of going to press

… or should that be June? Half term is later than usual, so might even be on the warm side this year – and there’s plenty to keep everyone occupied, says Sally Coffey

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May 17, groups of up to 30 people will be able to mix outdoors

he ongoing saga that is lockdown has meant it’s been hard to keep track of when you can take a family holiday and when you can’t, with many of us holding back this year for fear our hopes will be dashed again.

However, with the continual success of the vaccine rollout, together with Boris Johnson’s more realistic roadmap out of lockdown, spring staycations are looking likely. The reopening of self-catering accommodation in England (campsites and holiday lets with no shared indoor facilities), from April 12, means Easter escapes are out for many families. Meanwhile, as Telegraph Travel reported just last week, up to 90 per cent of UK summer holiday options have already sold out. But the May half-term, which for most English and Welsh schools runs from late May until the first week of June, is good to go (Scotland and Northern Ireland don’t have a May break).

With this year’s half-term running later than usual this year (May 29-June 6), there’s a good chance that your break could be a sunny and warm one. Then there’s the fact that, according to the current reopening timeline, two bubbles should be able to mix indoors from May 17, “most social contact rules will be lifted”, and groups of up to 30 people will be able to mix outdoors. That means one thing – the time has finally come to enjoy extended play dates by holidaying with another bubble, have adult conversation with people you don’t live with (hallelujah), and make use of the babysitting services of friends and grandparents, so you can have a moment’s peace or even (dare we dream?), a lie-in.

Scotland’s First Minister, Nicola Sturgeon, is expected to give a more detailed roadmap next week, which should give some indication of when self-catering accommodation and other trips can take place. At present the Northern Ireland Executive and the Welsh Government are being more cautious with regards to specific dates. As always, you should check the terms before booking, regarding cancellations owing to Covid19, and keep an eye on guidelines.

But the good news is that if you’ve been left so frazzled from home-schooling and the constant change of rules that you’ve not booked anywhere yet, you’re not too late. It’s true that a lot of places have been taken due to the carryover from last year and the rush to book holidays following Boris’s announcement, but lots of new openings, spring pop-ups, and the expansion or pivoting of existing businesses mean there is still a decent amount of availability. Here are some of the best places to finally have a family holiday worth writing home about.

HIDE AWAY, WEST SUSSEX

For parents with children aged 10 and over, the exquisitely designed retreat Little Whispers in the South Downs village of Lodsworth is great for a family of four in need of a change of scenery. There is an outdoor terrace for alfresco dining with countryside views to enjoy, books and games for rainy days, plus plenty of options for family days out with the South Downs Way right on the doorstep.

Pop along to the village’s 18th-century pub, The Hollist Arms, for dinner, or pick up local produce, including freshly baked bread, from the community shop next door.

From £130 per night, two-night minimum stay (01730 239852; cabinsandcastles.co.uk).

RETRO RELAXATION, SUFFOLK Offering a slice of bygone Americana in the Suffolk countryside just a few miles from the beach, this collection of cool vintage Airstream campers, camper vans and retro caravans has a healthy sprinkling of kitsch. With just nine pitches in total (tents are only allowed when booking a camper/caravan), it’s an intimate affair – and all the better for it.

There’s a kids’ play area (plus an old army truck), and firepits are included in the price. But best of all is the onsite cinema, which shows classic family films twice a week.

A week’s stay costs from £570-£770. Short breaks also available (01728 603424; happydaysrv.co.uk). More information: englandscoast.com

More than 2.5 million people took a caravan or motorhome holiday in the UK last year.

TAKE TO THE TREES, PERTHSHIRE The five sustainable Treehouses at Lanrick are hidden away in pretty woodland on the banks of the River Teith in Perthshire and offer an authentic Scottish wilderness experience, just four miles from the Trossachs National Park. Fulfilling every child’s fantasy of sleeping in the trees (while keeping parents happy too), each treehouse comes with its own kitchen/living area, a log-burning stove, bathroom, and outdoor bath or shower.

There is also a treetop terrace with barbecue area and all guests receive a welcome hamper of local goodies. A family of four can squeeze into one as long as no one minds the sofa bed, or for more space, two of the treehouses connect via a bridge.

Two nights from £500 based on a family of four (children 12 and under) sharing one treehouse (lanricktreehouses.co.uk).

TURN BACK TIME, DEVON

The gorgeous shepherd huts in the grounds of Lympstone Manor are guaranteed to give you Far from the Madding Crowd feelings – albeit with lots of luxurious additions, including hand-painted walls and skylights.

Each Tardis-like hut can sleep two to five people with a king-sized double in each, plus either a double bed or bunk beds. They come equipped with kitchenettes, wood-burning stoves, firepits and indoor and outdoor showers – some even have “hiki” hot tubs. With a breakfast hamper delivery, optional picnic lunch and even a dinner delivery option from the main house, you may not want to venture far. However, with the Jurassic Coast nearby, the kids will probably manage to get you up and out.

From £409 a night including breakfast based on two sharing, £80 for each additional person (01395 202040; lympstonemanor.co.uk).

The average high temperature in Devon in June is 19C – 3C warmer than the high in May of 16C.

BACK TO NATURE, CAIRNGORMS For something really, really wild, this guided camping safari is the real deal. Tailored to you and your family, you’ll be led by a professional wildlife tracker (and her dog) across the Cairngorms, where you may well spot Scottish crossbills, black grouse, red deer, otters and pine martens. By day you can go white-water rafting, canyoning or horse-riding. By night you can play cards while your guide cooks for you around the campfire, before regaling you with stories on everything from astronomy to folktales. Accommodation is in a tipi-style tent with raised beds, and as this is wild camping in the truest sense – there’s a portable compost toilet and solar-powered shower. From £400 for a week (01273 823700; responsibletravel.com).

FUN ON THE FARM,

NORTH YORKSHIRE

With a campsite, glamping pods, and its very own fairy trail, Studfold farm is perfectly set up in the Yorkshire Dales (an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty) for families. The 1.5-mile nature and fairy trail weaves through meadows and woods and will fire your children’s imaginations while encouraging them to solve clues dotted along the route. There is a café on-site, plus a grass go-karting and mini tractor circuit. How Stean Gorge is just next door, where you can walk through the limestone ravine and explore underground caves while looking out for fossils underfoot.

From £30 a night for a family of four camping (01423 755084; studfold.com). X

Meteorological summer begins June 1.

A REALLY WILD STAY,

EAST SUSSEX

The not-so-secret Secret Campsite is renowned for its sense of space and its quiet policy, which allows for more wildlife sightings – think hedgehogs, nightingales, newts among others. There are wheelbarrows for transporting your stuff (so cars don’t spoil the views), plus firepits, flushing toilets and solar-powered hot showers.

Gridshell, a heavy-duty ready-made tent with sail canvas and ash frame, sleeps up to five and still has some availability. The brand-new secret shelter Okra is also due to open any day now. Ashdown Forest, home to Winnie the Pooh, is nearby.

Tent pitches from £22 per adult, £11 per child. Gridshell is available from £125 per night with a two-night minimum stay (01273 401 100; thesecretcampsite.co.uk).

TOTAL SECLUSION,

STIRLINGSHIRE

How’s this for a quiet family escape? Two twin pods set by a swimming lake with no one else around for miles – unless you count the deer and birds, of course.

The cosy Loch Rusky Glamping pods each sleep two and have comfy beds, hot showers and real toilets, plus little kitchenettes.

Outside there’s a firepit for cooking dinner or toasting marshmallows (plus a barbecue if you need to speed things up), lots of lovely nature walks and even a bird-hide with extraordinary views. Located just 15 miles outside Stirling, it’s an easy drive from the train station, or if you ask really nicely, the owners may even pick you up.

£160 per pod per night (kiphideaways. com).

One&Only, the upscale hotel brand, is launching two new hotels in Montenegro in the next three years. The first, the One&Only Portonovi, opens next month, and is the brand’s first European outpost. The second, Siro, just along the coast in Boka Bay, will open in 2023, and is a health and fitness-focused facility to tap into our newfound concern for well-being. Every element of a Siro hotel will be designed with this in mind.

Each property will have a vast gym (minimum 1,000 square metres) and a pool where a dedicated trainer will work on the goals you said you wanted to reach at the time of booking. If you are lucky, you will be working out with one of the brand’s star athletes. First to join is Adam Peaty, who won the gold medal in the 100-metre breaststroke at the 2016 Olympics and is favourite to win Olympic gold again this year. Fittingly, the only massage available will be sports massage – and, after exercise, infrared saunas and cryotherapy will be available in the vast recovery area.

The opening is a further sign that Montenegro is developing into a new upmarket, short-haul destination. Aman blazed a trail with the opening of Sveti Stefan in a 15th-century island fortress on an 80-acre coastal estate a decade ago. Tivat airport is becoming a popular destination for private jets.

On clear days, the morning sun casts a rosy glow over the whitewashed houses of Vejer de la Frontera. Far away in the distance – beyond the green fields, the paleblonde beaches of the windswept Costa de la Luz and the glinting Barbate wetlands – you might just make out Morocco looming across the Strait of Gibraltar. Its influence has helped shape the ancient hilltop town of Vejer, one of Andalucia’s most charming pueblos blancos (white villages), which in recent years has become a sizzling hub of creativity.

I grew up in southern Andalucia. Since childhood family trips to the Costa de la Luz, I’ve seen Vejer morph from a little-visited pocket of Cadiz province into one of the most exciting places in southern Spain. Ambitious boutique lodgings are now rubbing shoulders with forward-thinking small-scale wineries rooted in gaditano flavours. Independent shops are showcasing subtly reimagined Spanish crafts, and family-owned restaurants are experimenting with fresh local produce. As Andalucia begins to emerge from Spain’s most recent Covid-19 lockdown, local businesses are tentatively looking ahead to the summer.

A web of blinding-white streets fans out from the Plaza de España and its slender palms to Vejer’s Moorish-era castle. The Gothic-Mudéjar church, like so many others in Andalucia, stands on the site of an old mosque. The town passed through Phoenician, Roman and Moorish hands, and sat for years on the tumultuous border between Islamic and Christian Spain. Today’s Vejer, with its distinct charm, brings a change of view and pace from its Costa de la Luz neighbours. Recent years have added a fresh layer of design, style and luxury, in the form of intimate boutique hotels and creative restaurants breathing new life into old-town buildings.

It was this fusion of tranquil Andalucian hill town with influences of Morocco and remnants of Moorish architecture that drew James Stuart, the Scottish owner of the pioneering Califa Vejer properties, here on his travels through rural Spain in the late 1980s – originally by accident, on the hunt for a bite to eat after surfing at nearby Caños de Meca while staying in Tarifa.

Stuart returned to Vejer a year later, set up a mountain-biking holiday company, and eventually rented out a few B&B rooms in his own home, which morphed into La Casa del Califa, Vejer’s original boutique bolthole.

La Casa del Califa has grown up to become one of Andalucia’s most fabulous destination hotels, occupying a cluster of interlinked 16th-century houses, with a terrific North AfricanMiddle Eastern restaurant, a strong sustainable ethos and sections dating from the 10th century. The town’s most hotly anticipated arrival was the Califa team’s recently opened Plaza 18, an 1890s merchant’s house (built from a 13th-century home) recast with elegant, global-inspired interiors by London designer Nicky Dobree.

Now Stuart and his business partner

Regli Alvarez have a handful of properties and restaurants, including Las Palmeras del Califa next door, refurbished by the Scottish interior designer and restaurateur Ellie Cormié (who also runs Vejer’s successful Corredera 55 restaurant); Califa Casas, a collection of stylish self-catering homes expanded in 2021; and a centuries-old building that is currently being converted into a soothing hammam.

“Creativity is all around us in Vejer,” says Cormié, “in the form of palmfilled patios, arches, stonework and the soft-toned doorways scattered through the cobbled streets of the old part of town. The colourful sevillano tiles that have lasted through time hint at the houses passed down through generations and give a wonderful colour palette to work from. I’ve used these tones, working with local craftsmen, to create the looks for Corredera 55, all enhanced by the sharp, clear light of the Costa de la Luz.”

And there is plenty more. At the chicly converted 18th-century townhouse Casa Shelly, its Swedish-British owner, Chris Pettersson, has gone for a Scandi-Andalucian guesthouse look, courtesy of Seville-based designer Amparo Garrido. La Fonda Antigua is another delightful village home turned boutique bolthole, envisioned by jerezana sherry maker Eugenia Claver. Hotel V, meanwhile, brings an arty edge to a 17th-century mansion revitalised by Belgian hotelier Jean van Gysel.

It’s not just about design, however: Vejer has also grown into one of Andalucia’s gastronomic highlights. The food scene here is fired almost entirely by locally produced ingredients of outstanding quality, from exquisite olive oils and payoyo goat’s cheese made in Grazalema to the passing Atlantic bluefin tuna caught using the ancient almadraba method introduced by the Phoenicians.

These days, many vejeriegos live in the newer, more modern part of Vejer and the rising number of holidayhouse rentals, but the labyrinthine old town is still very much full of life and dotted with locally run businesses. Even the boho-chic boutiques are small, original operations.

Up on the rooftop terrace of the Califa’s Moroccan-style tetería (teahouse), I settled in with a mulberry-toned blanket and a glass of cava as the sky turned a hundred shades of pink over Vejer. Then I spotted locally made orange wine on the menu, and rather wished I had ordered that instead. It’s the perfect excuse to pop back to Vejer, as always, “just once more”.

Overseas holidays are currently subject to restrictions. See Page 3.

Ihope you agree with me that some questions simply must be answered. We basically spend our lives looking for definitive solutions so we can tick off certain things in our heads and be absolutely sure. I’m not talking about the big stuff here – the “Why are we here?” and “Is there life on another planet?” questions. Please. I’m an orange TV presenter; I think it’s important that I don’t um, overreach.

No, I’m talking about the other stuff: the little things that still matter. I’m talking about the best sandwich (a tuna melt), the best cocktail (a margarita) and the best game to play with friends (bridge, of course). Can I just add that this is not a conversation, this is not a what-do-you-think moment. This is just fact, so don’t @ me. Then, of course, there’s the biggie, the one that will often stump us – where is the best place to rent a cottage in the UK? Never before has this question been so important, so vital, so… well, needed.

I can hear quite a lot of praise for the Lake District. I can see there are a few of you who think the answer is the Cotswolds. I absolutely love Scotland, too, but I’m here to tell you that – as with bridge, a margarita and indeed anything covered in melted cheese – I have found the answer. The best place in the UK is on the outskirts of a small moor in Cornwall. That’s it. End of. Bam. Finito. Case closed. Thanks so much for coming. Night night. If you’re shaking your head, if you’re thinking “she’s lost it”, if you’re not totally with me, then let me elaborate.

Tregulland is a collection of houses on Bodmin Moor about 20 minutes inland from Boscastle. It’s surrounded by the most beautiful countryside I have ever seen. I know: a sweeping statement. But here’s the thing. There isn’t just one type of countryside and, rather magically, rather magnificently, this particular group of dwellings is surrounded by all of them. Big rolling hills dotted with extra fluffy (no, I don’t know how this is possible either) sheep? Yup, that’s just out the window if you’re in the sitting room. A Gruffalo-style stream, surrounded by tall and beautiful ash trees, that is home to otters? Yup. Well, you can find that if you look out the bathroom window. Is it never-ending and dense woods with small pools crammed with tadpoles that you’re after? No problem. Just exit the front door, walk across a field and you will be bang in the middle of the most beautiful forest. It is called Wilsey Woods.

You don’t need to move about, you don’t need to plan. You don’t need to buy a “where should we walk to” book, and you won’t need to scratch your head while placing some paperweights on an oversized OS map just after dinner. It’s all just… there. You can go to the coast if you want the sea (Bude and Crackington Haven are very close by), you can go inland if you want more emerald green, rolling hills. You can pop into a small town like Tintagel if you’re after fish and chips – or you can sit at home and marvel at the landscape.

If that hasn’t done it, then let me explain the house, or houses. You see, Tregulland is made up of a few different options. If there’s a massive gaggle of you, then you can take the lot; but if you’re just a small group, take one. They are separate enough to feel you’re not on top of other guests, but close enough for you all to use the pool and table tennis games room. That’s right. I said swimming pool. And indeed, ping pong.

The pool is full of fresh water so your eyes don’t sting, and has glass on one whole side. So you’re in, but you’re also out. You can splash about and look out across the fields. And once you are dry and have eaten a fish cake (more of this later), you can grab beers and then crush your children at table tennis (correct, I am a terrible parent).

The houses are beautifully done and perfect for big groups. They are not modern and all sharp corners but, instead, freakishly cosy without being chichi. Huge sofas with oversized cushions sprawl all over the sitting room. Tucked in the corner is a games area with giant Connect 4, cards, chess, backgammon and a whole selection of books on local wildlife and trees to rummage through, plus a TV that isn’t alarmingly big and has Netflix, Sky and the whole jamboree. The kitchen is long and wide and has a fridge into which I could fit my bedroom.

In between all of this there is a fantastic dining room that can easily sit 14. The table is covered in enormous candles, and beautiful drawings and paintings hang all over the walls. All of these rooms interlink, which is excellent so you don’t have to leave the fun if it’s time to mash a butternut squash. The kitchen has every pan you could ever need and, rather generously, is full when you arrive. A lovely welcome note sits next to a bottle of wine, some local eggs and cheeses, and more herbs than an overstocked garden centre.

Upstairs are five bedrooms that are spacious and comfortable – and almost all have a bathroom en suite. This is handy if you are with teenagers who sleep and bathe at odd times. The “It’s 11pm, what do you mean you’re going to have a shower?” that happens all the time at home is replaced with “Sure, you do you. We love you and plus, we have crumpets for the morning.” Better.

I mentioned fish cakes so I’d like to elaborate. Vicky is a local caterer and works closely with the owners of the houses. She can basically make you anything you fancy. I know that, when you rent a house, the first four days are all fun and frolics in the kitchen. “You make the roast potatoes and I’ll fillet the fish – and why don’t you have a go at roasted cauliflower, babe?” But then, after non-stop washing up and peeling, you can slump and take a load off. Vicky will deliver rammed-to-thebrim-with-haddock fish pie, bonkers good treacle tart, chocolate brownies (that made my 17-year-old almost cry), and prawn curry that is so addictive it should probably be illegal.

When you’re done soaking up the landscape, roasting marshmallows at the fire pit and playing Connect 4, take the small drive to Boscastle and you’ll find it’s so lovely you will immediately try to move there. Follow the stream through the village and out to the sea and there are the greatest views known to man. It’s a heady mix of deep blue sea, roaring waves, rich green fields and the odd wild horse. Even if you are allergic to exercise (I’m talking about me here) you will walk and walk and walk. Every corner, every turn is more breathtaking than the next.

So now that we have put that question and answer to bed, I am definitely in need of help with the best way to eat potatoes. I’m pretty sure it’s jacket but my family say it’s boiled new. Send your replies on a postcard please.